A bit of everything

Auto Technician in Texas

2009-01-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

As I stated earlier I am a technician at one of the local dealerships in the Houston area.

I thought that seams how the cost of living in Texas was lower the cost of getting your car repaired would be lower also, well that's not the way it works out.

In California the labor rate was $129 per hour versus Texas at $91 per hour. well that sounds about right, it should be lower in Texas right? so the unsuspecting consumer thinks he or she is getting a much better price in Texas.

Now on the surface you are paying less per hour but I have found in Texas you will be charged more hours for the repair, sometimes double the hours but on the average 50% more.

Here is an example in california we charged 4 hours to change a timing belt and water pump that was $519 in labor, here in Texas that same job we charge 6 hours that comes to $546, so the people in California paying the higher labor rate are actualy paying less for needed maintenance on there car.

I just thought it was interesting and wanted to point out that hourly labor rate is not the only thing you should look for when shopping for a place to get your car worked on.

Ridding Out a Hurricane

2008-12-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

As I already mentioned we just moved to Texas in July, we had no experience with Hurricanes.

July and August we had several warnings but nothing developed so the last week of August I decided I was tired of all the plywood taking up space in the garage and had the bright idea of moving them all to the attic (the plywood is used to protect the windows and we have a lot of windows) it took half a day to haul them all up there.

Yep you guessed it, the very next weekend Ike struck, Friday I was hauling them all back down to install them on the windows. That was a lot of work and I hope I never need to do that again. They now stay in the garage.

A lot of people we know evacuated but we decided to ride it out, the house is well made and should not have any problems.

All day we watched as the clouds thickened and the winds started to pick up, Ike is on a direct path for us.

Everything was kinda fun then exciting, I don't think we ever got scared. It was about 10 pm and we lost power. The winds were blowing really good by then but all is still fine, the boards are holding ( I thought that through also and only put up half, the side of the house the storm was approaching)

OK as I said already I had no experience with this and didn't think things through as well as I thought. The winds of a hurricane move in a circular pattern so they hit one way coming and the other leaving.

So now it's a 2 am and we are now on the back side of the hurricane, it's blowing the rain so hard it's hitting the back door under the patio and water is being forced past the seal and hitting the far wall of the entry, time to grab the towels. OK now I know to put up all the boards!

The next morning the sun is out, the winds are down, I think it's safe to go out and inspect the property fully expecting to see a lot of damage. To our surprise we found none.

The next day we had our power back on, again lucky. we drove around two days after and found total devastation all around us, most of the properties around us had damage, roofs missing, trees and fences blown over. we even saw one mobile home totally destroyed and a house blown over. People we know had still been without power three weeks later.

I would never recommend to anyone to ride out a category 3 hurricane, Would I do it again? probably but I've never been known for my brains.

From City life to the country

2008-12-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

Mid July we moved from central California to Santa Fe Texas.

Boy what a difference, we hardly had a yard, the neighborhood was loud and busy 24 hours a day.
The new home is on more than an acre of land and you can only see one neighbor. The only noise you hear is from cows and the local wild life.

Now mowing all that yard is a challenge. For the first three months all we had was a Honda walk behind mower, it took over five hours to mow the yard. In July and August with the high temperatures and humidity that was quite a work out.

We finally managed to purchase a riding mower and that makes life a lot easier.

The mornings are the best, thats when all the wild life comes out. There is a hawk family living in the trees that we get to watch hunt on a daily bases. we have seen deer, coyote, armadillo, snakes of many breeds, and all kinds of birds.

We have now had six baby snakes get into the house. It's a new house and well built so we cant figure out how they are getting in. The cat loves to play with them so we have to be quick to get them before she does.

I am also a Honda Technician and I tell you, the differences between the Honda dealers in California and Texas was more extreme than I could have imagined, I won't go into details now but will write a post just on that in the near future.

I will try to go into more details of our move as well as a host of other subjects soon.